


And then she woke up

by annathecrow



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, F/F, Female-Centric, Hydra likes stuffing people into boxes, Maya Hansen didn't die, POV Female Character, Pre-Relationship, Shippy Gen, discussion of HYDRA experiments, set after AoS season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 04:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1927131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annathecrow/pseuds/annathecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Maya Hansen survives her own death (thank you, Hydra!). Skye probably isn't the right person to explain what happened. And maybe, she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And then she woke up

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This fandom needs more lady-love.  
> 2\. Maya Hansen ISN'T dead, thank you very much.  
> 3\. *shrugs* Why not?

She wakes up slowly, like from a sleep after a fever. As she fights her way towards wakefulness, an idea overcomes her. A feeling, like she is forgetting something. _Something happened, something... it was important. With Killian? With Stark?? Come on, Maya, remember..._

She opens her eyes to a half dim room with walls of metal and glass. It looks nothing like the villa where Mandarin -- oh _god_.

“I thought I was dead.” she says aloud. Her voice sounds raspy, and her throat doesn’t feel much better.

“We did too,” a female voice replies cheerfully. “It was pretty freaky. I will never get used to the kinds of things S.H.I.E.L.D. stuffed their warehouses with. Or HYDRA, I guess...” the voice trails off, losing it’s cheer along the way.

“OH, sorry... are you alright? How do you feel? Do you want a drink? Water, not booze, I don’t think Jemma would allow that right now...”

Maya slowly turns her head towards the voice. A young woman, a girl really, hastily puts away her laptop and reaches for a plastic drinking bottle standing on the table. She helps Maya to drink from it. Maya gulps the water down - too fast, she chokes a little and starts to cough. Her chest feels odd, numb.

She looks at the girl. “Are you a doctor?” she asks, doubtfully. She really doesn’t look like one, in an oversized plaid shirt over a gray tank-top.

“No,” laughs the girl, “really, no. Just covering for a friend. She’s visiting someone, she’ll be back soon. We didn’t think you’d wake up so fast. I’m Skye,” she starts to offer a hand, but stops and stuffs her hands to the pockets instead.

Maya blinks slowly, trying to parse everything the girl... Skye... said so far. It doesn’t answer any of the real questions.

“How am I not dead? I got shot. I _bled out_...”

Skye lightly touches her arm, a little gesture of comfort. “Yeah, about that...” she tries for a smile, but it comes out a little too stiff to be genuine. Maya knows that kind of smile. It’s the one you give the patient before the bad news.

“The good news? You’re definitely alive, and you’re probably going to stay that way in the near future.”

Maya takes a breath. “And the bad news?”

“Youmightbemissingsomeofyourinternalorgans.” Skye grimaces.

“...what?”

“See, HYDRA weren’t really big on the get-a-signed-release part of science. However they got the hold of you, they used it as an opportunity to test some of their toys.” Her eyes stray down towards Maya’s chest, and Maya is pretty sure she isn’t checking her out right now. She raises her hand and pulls away the thick comforter, and then the thin standard-issue hospital gown.

From her clavicle down, her chest is a smooth, dull gray surface. She can’t tell how far down it goes, or where it ends on the sides. For one irrational moment, all she can think is, _damn, they took my boobs, too._

“Fitz said it’s probably some kind of titanium alloy, but he couldn’t tell much just from the photos.” Skye says quietly.

“What’s underneath?” Maya asks, because curse it, she is still a scientist.

“Artificial lungs, heart... and all those other parts. Basically everything that’s supposed to be in there.” She shakes her head. “It just looks like miracle, you know?”

Maya just can’t stand to look at her anymore. She turns her head away. “Trust me, I know a bit about miracles like that. They always come at a price.”

She startles when Skye laughs. “Oh, I know,” she says with such a feeling that Maya can’t resist looking back at her. Skye gives her a smile that really makes Maya wonder what’s the story here. And it is a very pretty smile, she admits to herself. She realizes she must be staring, but that can always be blamed at the anesthetic, right? Wait, about that...

“Where did you say you found me?”

Skye blinks. “In a SHIELD warehouse in the French Alps. AC thinks they must have stashed you there after Centipede got their super-soldier mix working... or maybe after SHIELD blew up. We were following a lead on Reyna, and found the warehouse. It was a dead end, but then Agent May found the box.” Skye pulls up a chair and sits next to the bed. “It was really big,” she gestures high above her head. “Much bigger than the stasis chamber we got from Centipede. But it was transparent too, and then we noticed the body. I mean, we thought it was a body!” she waves her arms around, as if to prove her point. “And Jemma says, we have to bury her, right? Because of course she does.” Skye smiles then. Maya wonders who Jemma is, and what makes her the kind of person to bury nameless dead experiment subjects.

“Anyway,” Skye continues, “we crack the box open. It makes all kinds of sounds, and the mist, and it all looks like from an 80s sci-fi movie. And then...” she leans forward, “the ‘body’ starts breathing!” she throws her arms out, like if she was describing an explosion, not a bodily function. “Jemma screams, Trip jumps up at least a foot into the air, and I swear I saw Melinda twitch.”

Maya finds herself smiling. “And what about you?”

“Me? What about me?” Skye asks incredulously. After a beat, she deflates a little. “I _might_ have yelped.” she smiles lopsidedly. “But just a little bit!”

“Uh huh...” Maya nods with a smile.

“Hey, who is telling the story, you or me? Well, then, since we already opened the case, we took you on the bus and got home as fast as we could. The Playground, I mean. And here we are.”

“A playground? On a bus?” Maya asks, trying to make sense of her story.

“The Bus, capital B. It’s actually a plane. And Playground, capital P, is a base.” Skye shrugs. “SHIELD naming gets weird sometimes.”

“I’ve noticed,” Maya replies dryly. “I mean, ‘SHIELD’, really?”

“Hey, don’t diss.” Skye frowns.

Maya sobers a little. “You’re right, I’m sorry. That was mean.” She shrugs. “I have done my share of terrible naming.” She fights the urge to look away and forces herself to look Skye in the eye.

“Extremis, right?” Skye asks.

Before Maya can answer, a young woman bursts into the room, the tails of her half-buttoned lab coat billowing behind her.

“Dr. Hansen, you are awake!” she exclaims, struggling with the buttons of her coat. “Skye, why didn’t you notify me?”

“You were with Fitz.” Skye says, but the young woman isn’t really paying attention. She flutters around the room, checking the machines, Maya’s pupil response, pulse, and other things with a skill that leaves Maya without doubts that she is the doctor Skye was talking about.

“How are you feeling, Dr. Hansen?” she asks Maya, and with the same breath, to Skye: “Fitz would have understood the importance, as you very well know.”

“Yeah, but he’d be mopey all afternoon, Jemma...” Skye all but whines. “And I can’t deal with those puppy eyes, can you?”

Maya lets the doctor do her work. It all feels oddly comforting, despite the fact that usually she was on the other and of these ministrations. When she looks away, she notices Skye slowly backing out of the room. Skye smiles and gives a little wave, before turning to leave. “I’m gonna tell the team!” she yells over her shoulder, and then she’s gone.

“Dr. Hansen?” the doctor asks, and Maya turns back to her. “The rest of our team will want to ask a few questions. Do you think you can manage that? If you are too tired...”

“No. I’ll do it,” Maya answers. She takes a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

 

 


End file.
